 |
Shoulder lifts with a bottle
full of batteries |
We spent 15 hours in the lab today. We were supposed to
finish everything in the morning, but no matter how fast we worked, it was
impossible to finish before midnight. At least it was interesting work. We
watched the crabs respond to a variety of smells when we put them in our
arenas. Today was much more interesting than yesterday because we decided to
exercise throughout the experiments. Each crab is tested for one minute. As
soon as the crab was in the arena, we would drop down for some push-ups or
other fun exercises!
 |
| Our group! |
We have been split into two teams of three, my teammates
being Justin and Morgan. Our group finished the odor experiments in the early
afternoon and we continued onto the final part of the experiments. This
involved removing all 120 crabs from their shells and then weighing them. Our
professor had heard that ant pheromones create an alarm response in hermit
crabs that make them come out of their shells. He told our group to go outside
and collect ants. I’m not talking about the little black ants that you find in
you back yard. These ants were huge and had gigantic pincers that would draw
blood if they pinched you. Using forceps and sticks, we gathered a bunch of
ants and put them into a bottle. It’s crazy how scary something so small could
be so scary. Needless to say, there was a lot of screaming and panicking
involved in this activity.
 |
| Collecting ants! |
 |
| Gigantic ants! |
 |
| Happy crabs! |
We finally gathered enough ants and sprayed their pheromones
on a crab. It didn’t work. All that for nothing. Instead, we spent 3 hours
manually pulling the hermit crabs from their shells and unfortunately, some of
them didn’t survive. Once they were out of their shells, we weighed them and
then we were finally done with the experiment! The only thing left to do was
return the crabs to their shells and put them in a big bucket together. It made
me so happy to see all of the brightly colored crabs merrily running around in
their shells. They had spent 3 days in little plastic cups. They were probably
happy to be on the move again. Tomorrow we will return them to their home in
the rainforest!
I added a few more creatures to the list of animals we've spotted!
 |
| Woodpecker! |
 |
| Iguana! |
No comments:
Post a Comment